CHAPTER 30

Only a few feet of the museum’s floorboards were warped, and Rude was able to pull them up with a hammer.  When the refuse had been disposed of, Isobel gave him an exclusive showing of the old pictures in their new frames, and arranged chronologically from 1902 to 1958.  Rude went through the box three times telling the stories in more and more detail.

As Rude recalled, his uncle, Jubilation Crawlback, was not an overtly honest man in 1895 when he met up with the Hoolahan men, Ezeriah and his son Horace (Clem’s father.)  But Jube’s tendencies ran more toward the flimflam side of things, whereas the Hoolahans connived to be land barons with a Machiavellian fervor that sent shivers up Jube’s spine.

Each men had a different concept of exploitation but all had the idea that they were going to reform, in some unknown manor, when they reached Montana.   However, human nature was not to be thwarted by the random musings of corrupt men just because they were sitting around a fire in the middle of nowhere.  And, truth be told, by the time they reached Jerkwater an outside observer would have been hard-put to say who had come up with the most deviant plan. 

Even before they reached their destination, Jube deeply rued the day he met the Hoolahans and regretted the agreement he had signed.  Once he saw how arid the land was, he assumed an attitude of dismay and declared that he was only interested in the twenty acres closest to the settlement.  This, understandably, caused the Hoolahans great consternation; they were now liable for the development of an extra six-hundred-and-twenty acres with a monthly rental fee of twenty-five cents per acre.  And, since the contract had been for three six-hundred-and forty acre parcels, if they didn’t pay for and improve all the land, they would loose claim to everything.  

Jube, in his own slick way, had contacted the only lawyer in a fifty-mile radius, and had slithered out of the agreement.  Furthermore, Jube, with his propensity for gratuitous good luck, had convinced that selfsame lawyer to stake him in building a hard-liquor-and-gambling establishment, connected to a    bathhouse - “bathing attendants” included - where the cowboys and herders could come for their biannual baths.  Jube, barely twenty-two,  was on his way to being the wealthiest man in the county.                   

The Hoolahans were livid and swore revenge.